The first time she saw these portraits, she turned and walked
rapidly out of the parlor. She had enough troubles of her own
without bearing the troubles of all these faces. Later on she could
confront them with equanimity--that company of the pallid, the
desperately sick, the unaccountably uncomfortable. All looked, not
as though there had been a death in the family, but a death in the
collection: only the same grief could have so united them as
mourners. And whatever else they lacked, each showed two hands, the
full number, placed where they were sure to be counted.

She was in the midst of this psychological reversion to ancestral
gayety when David arrived. Each looked quickly at the other with
unconscious fear. Within a night and a day each had drawn nearer to
the other; and each secretly inquired whether the other now
discovered this nearness. Gabriella saw at least that he, too, was
excited with happiness.

He appeared to her for the first time handsome. He WAS better
looking. When one approaches the confines of love, one nears the
borders of beauty. Nature sets going a certain work of decoration,
of transformation. Had David about this time been a grouse, he
would probably have displayed a prodigious ruff. Had he been a
bulbul and continued to feel as he did, he would have poured into
the ear of night such roundelays as had never been conceived of by
that disciplined singer. Had he been a master violinist, he would
have been unable to play a note from a wild desire to flourish the
bow. He had long stood rooted passively in the soil of being like a
century plant when it is merely keeping itself in existence. But
latterly, feeling in advance the approach of the Great Blossoming
Hour, he had begun to shoot up rapidly into a lofty life-stalk;